Communication devices like mobile phones, smart telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), laptop, personal computers, and other electronic communication devices are widely used for personal, professional, and business purposes. These electronic communication devices have gone beyond luxury to being necessity with the current globalization and due to need for better and remote availability of sharable information and resources. Further, these communication devices have undergone significant technical advancements with regard to processor, memory, and application software which have resulted in increased number of facilities provided by such communication devices.
A typical mobile device not only does provide communication capabilities but also opens up a world of numerous entertainment options for users. For example, mobile applications are available that enable a user to listen to music content, watch videos, play games etc. With the ever increasing usage of mobile devices, the demand for such mobile applications has increased many folds in the last two decades. Understandably, a market segment has emerged that provides products and services to the mobile device users. Mobile users are provided with a wide variety of software, mobile applications, service choices to enhance the features and usage capabilities of the mobile device.
Mobile gaming applications are one of the most popular contents consumed by mobile users in today's mobile networks. In majority of the existing mobile networks, the most popular model available to consume gaming content corresponds to a client-server environment where the mobile device owned by the user serves as a client and service provider's/operator's portal acts as a server. A user can download one or more game application from the portal, pay a price and then owns the content thereafter. The mobile user can use the content repeatedly without paying any additional price.
Another method for consuming gaming content includes making the game available in the mobile device itself. Such games can be provided along with other mobile applications by mobile device manufacturers. These games are typically free and are not separately charged by the device manufacturer. Rather, in most cases, the license fee for the software/mobile application is included in the price of the mobile device. However, such a method suffers from the static nature of most gaming applications that cannot be refreshed when new games are available in the market. In some cases, the refresh is possible but on an additional cost.
Yet another method is to download free games from internet onto the mobile device without paying for the gaming content. Many of these games include advertisements (Ads) within the game content and show up when games are played on the mobile device. Some of these Ads are static whereas some games require a connection to network server for refreshing the Ads on the fly. However, in many parts of the world, mobile users may not have easy and cheap access to internet or may not know how to download the online gaming applications from the internet. Such users therefore depend on operator's portal for mobile gaming content. In addition, quality of the content available at free sites may not be as good as the one available at operator's portal.
Considering the experience from the mobile user's perspective with regard to gaming application, it is understood that one or more requirements need to be fulfilled by the mobile device for being able to successfully consume the mobile content. For instance, the mobile users can belong to different user segments like, but not limited to, “hard core gamers”, casual users with good interest in gaming, casual users with occasional or rare interest. The “hard core gamers” refer to mobile users who are interested in advanced or complex games and would like to master such games. Some mobile users would like to play the same game repeatedly till a desired level of performance is achieved. Such users would like to buy games and play them for extended period.
The second segment corresponds to those who would be interested in gaming content but would like to play a different game every time they chose to play and not the same game repeatedly. This segment would be interested in playing a large set of games. The third segment corresponds to mobile users who would be interested in playing games occasionally or rarely. Such users may play the same game few times or a different game every time. Concomitant with the classification of different users, a need arises for a system or method for adaptive pricing that suits all kind of users in different segments.
Furthermore, existing solutions require the user to download the complete game for few minutes of gaming experience. Typical gaming application may have data size of 400 KB-600 KB and takes time considering the existing available data rates. Therefore, to enjoy gaming for few minutes, the mobile user has to wait for long before the content appears on the mobile device. In general, download of a gaming content is not always a great experience for the mobile user. In addition, the mobile user may not want to go to the operator portal and start downloading again in the event of breaks in download operation due to some reason. Furthermore, the mobile game may require a minimum processing power and memory that may not be available in low end mobile devices. Hence, the target users for such games is limited.
In addition, existing systems and technologies pose a challenge to game developers to support large set of handsets which typically results in huge cost of porting games on large set of mobile devices. If the gaming application is not protected, the mobile user can copy games across devices and enjoy it free without paying. Existing systems and methods that enable the different service providers to support multiple pricing options include allowing the mobile device user to download content which is wrapped with a security wrapper (DRM protected). The wrapper controls the price by enabling a connection with server to update the data every time the mobile user selects a given pricing option. Correspondingly, a gaming application developer or an operator has to protect content with Digital Rights Management (DRM) wrappers which is typically an expensive technology.
In view of the above, there exists a well felt need for a system and method that address at least the above stated shortcomings in the art. It is also desirable that the above stated shortcomings be solved in such a manner that allows online hosting of existing mobile gaming application software without any modification in the mobile platform or in the gaming applications respectively.